


The Rise of Ben Solo

by haaaveyoumetted



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben Solo Lives, F/M, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the world between worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:20:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22316989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haaaveyoumetted/pseuds/haaaveyoumetted
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	The Rise of Ben Solo

His eyes shoot open and he sputteres out a cough as he forces air back into his lungs. He sits up slowly and looks around him, completely disoriented. He’s surrounded by a dark sky, as far as he can see. The ground he’s half laying on is hard- not quite solid enough to be concrete or something synthetic. There are no man-made structures in his line of sight in any direction. Nothing distinctive about the landscape. **_Nothing._ **

A surge of pain rushes through him and he winces, tenderly grabbing his side. He feels like he was just thrown off the side of a cliff. Closing his eyes, he tries to regulate his breathing.

_> > Focus. What’s the last thing you remember? << _

He pushes himself to clear away the fog and **_think_**. He sees blurs of blue and red light. Flashes of movement. _**Focus.**_

The image to starts to become clearer as he pushes to remember. He feels the connection snap into place before her face reaches complete clarity- but the jolt of energy that races through his body is enough to leave him breathless. Enough for him to remember.

“Rey.” His voice is barely above a whisper as the moments start coming back to him; flooding his mind faster than he can process them. The fight that lead to her fatal blow to his abdomen. Her transferring some of her life force to him to **_heal him_**. Seeing his father. Racing to follow her into whatever she was about to get herself into going up against Palpatine. **_Her allowing a force connection with him. Arming him with a weapon of the Resistance._** Standing by her side to fight, consequences be damned. Begging the galaxy to grant him the power she had been granted- **_to give him the life force to heal her. To bring her back_**. None of it was worth it if she wasn’t the one to make it out.

_…and the kiss._

A warmth spreads through his body as he clings to that moment. The moment he sees her eyes open and she looks at him. _“Ben!”_ She smiles brightly and leans in to kiss him and he feels weightless.

And then everything goes black. He can’t remember anything after that moment, until waking up where he is now.

_> > How did I go from kissing Rey, to no memory of how I ended up here? << _

He knows with certainty that whatever it was, it hadn’t happened by Rey’s hand. Which worries him more. He closes his eyes and reaches out with the Force. His pulse starts racing as he pushes and pushes, searching further and further and feels _**nothing.**_ He can’t help but feel the crippling anxiety taking over. He feels like a limb is missing, or he’s lost one of his senses. He can’t remember a time when he’s reached out with the Force and was met with complete silence in return.

Something was wrong; catastrophically, astronomically wrong. Slowly and as carefully as he can manage, he pushes himself to his feet. He finds that the condition of his leg hasn’t improved since the last time he tried to stand on it. He had no idea how far he’d need to walk before he would find even the slightest sign of civilization. That didn’t bode well for his survival in his current condition.

His entire body flinches, nearly toppling him back to the ground as lightning bolts flash around him. Their places of origin in the landscape around him appear completely random, surging from the ground and disappearing up into the seemingly endless black sky above him. He can’t feel the static electricity buzzing around him, yet everything is still _**so quiet.**_

He reaches out with the Force again- expanding as far as his mind will let him go. He feels something shift and his breath catches.

_“Ben Solo.”_

He _nearly_ doesn’t recognize the voice speaking to him. Throughout his lifetime, as he grew older, Kylo had only heard it the way he’d wanted to- the form he sought it out in. He had spent so much of his life, in his times of need, calling out for him through the Force, begging for guidance.

And finally, after all this time, there he was.

**Anakin.**

He didn’t appear to him as Vader; and as he tried to gather his thoughts in that moment and make sense of what exactly was happening- he supposed it made sense. He had to be at peace if he was appearing to him in this way. He couldn’t imagine after passing through to the other side would have been achieved through stubbornly holding onto who he’d been when he took on the identity of Darth Vader. Ben had never actually seen a Force ghost before- not with his own eyes.

Now he had.

 _“I knew this moment would come eventually. I would apologize for not coming to you all of the times you swore you needed me and my guidance, but I think we both know now it’s better that I didn’t.”_ Anakin said, a slight twitch of a smile on his face.

He looked like he couldn’t have been much older than Ben was at that moment, the way Anakin appeared to him now. Anakin was right. Of course, he was. Anakin had left his life in the physical realm not long after denouncing the Dark Side, if the stories he’d heard passed on were to be believed. Why would he spend his time finally at peace guiding someone down a path he himself regretted ever following?

“ _Why are you here now? What’s so significant about this moment?”_ Ben replied. He had a gut feeling that he wasn’t going to like the answer, if he received one at all. He still wasn’t fully convinced his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. He could be in a very deep sleep, caught up in a dream for all he knew. There was nothing around him to convince him otherwise.


End file.
